Earlier in the month I had done the HPS Big Four in Santa Barbara County in
a very long day door-to-door. The idea had been to nap in the afternoon while
the family was at school and work, leave San Jose after the kids go to bed at
8p, drive through the night, start hiking very early and go until sunset, then
drive back to San Jose without killing myself.
I next began to consider whether I could do
the same for a very long Sierra dayhike, and chose Triple Divide Peak and Lion
Rock along the Great Western Divide. Matthew had done this hike the previous
October, though I didn't find out until I had returned just how long it had
been.

I left San Jose at 9p, and fueled by caffeine and FM radio, I arrived at the
Crescent Meadow trailhead in SEKI NP four and half hours later. There had been
no cars for the last several hours, since shortly after leaving Fresno. There
were also no cars at the trailhead, and I would have the place to myself.
I decided to
sleep a bit in the back of the van, setting the alarm for 3a. I think there was
still too much caffeine in my system as I slept very little, but it was a
comfortable and refreshing rest, and by 3:15 I was ready to go.

This was my first foray onto the
High Sierra Trail, or at least this part of it
at the far western end. Matthew had warned me that it was long, really long,
really awfully long. And of course it was. For more than an hour and a half I
proceeded by headlamp, contouring the north side of the immense canyon carved
by the Marble Fork of the Kings River. Temperatures were in the 40's, and I
wore just a long sleeve tshirt.
The stars overhead were bright, particularly
the Milky Way, with the lights of the Central Valley visible to the west. It
slowly grew light towards the east, and shortly after 5a I was able to proceed
without the headlamp. Things began to become more pleasant as I had views
to take in and I became more awake. Flowers along the trail captured my
interest, as did a surprising number of
cascades and waterfalls found along the
way. On the far side of the canyon rose Castle Rock Spires, though they were
soon behind me and fading into the distance.

By 7a I had passed Buck Creek
and reached Bearpaw Meadow. Past this point, the
trail begins climbing before turning northeast towards Lone Pine Creek. I had
a muted view into Valhalla
and the Hamilton Lakes area, primarily because the
sun was shining in from behind it. I couldn't see Hamilton Lakes from my
vantage, but I could see the trail entering the canyon far below me. The trail
then begins a descent to
Lone Pine Creek, situated in a pretty valley at the
north end of the drainage area. Beyond, to the north,
was Elizabeth Pass, with
a great deal of water cascading down the steeply sloped granite leading to the
pass. I imagine I'll be making a trip up there someday to visit Glacier Ridge
found on the other side of the pass.

At a trail junction I turned right, heading east up the canyon. The trail led
me to beautiful Tamarack Lake,
where I arrived shortly after 9a. There was a
good deal more snow above the lake situated at 9,200ft, but most of it was on
north facing slopes towards Lion Rock. I found a great
many fish, all about 10"
long at the outlet of the lake, barely frightened by my appearance.
It wasn't until
I stepped on the log crossing the outlet that they scooted away. They must have
been quite hungry, recently emerging from the frozen lake and eagerly lined up
like cattle at the trough waiting for insects to flow by as the lake drains
into Lone Pine Creek. I figured I was doing pretty good time-wise, thinking I
might make the summit in another two hours as I covered the last two miles. But
it didn't quite go so fast.

The trail now ended, my first thought was to follow the creek upstream to Lion
Lake. Almost immediately I discovered why this was folly as I found myself
cutoff by a narrow ring of cliffs
the creek had cut through rock. In addition,
there was a good deal of heavy brush along the creek, forcing me to abandon
that plan. I backtracked a bit and traversed left along the cliffs until I
could climb up through a break in them. This brought me to a flat,
meadowy area,
though at this time of year it was more like a marsh. After stepping into
the spongy lowlands and wetting my boots, I backed up and made a careful
circumnavigation of the swamp in a clockwise direction. There were more cliffs,
though easier to navigate, above the meadow rising 1,500ft up to Lion Lake. Just
before reaching the lake I found I could no longer avoid the snow as it began
to cover all but the south-facing slopes. The snow was mostly firm, though it
didn't appear to have frozen overnight. I suspected it might be a sloppy mess
in a few hours. I reached Lion Lake at the base of Triple Divide's SW Face at
10:45a. Man, this was getting to be a haul!

Angling up to the right in an ascending traverse, I was soon off
the snow and heading over a great deal of boulders and talus
towards the saddle on the
crest west of Triple Divide Peak. Dubbed "Lion Lake Pass" by Secor, the pass is
straightforward class 2, offering a good cross-country route into
Cloud Canyon to the north.
By the time I had reached the pass at 11:30a, the wisps
of clouds I had ignored earlier were becoming something more to reckon with. As
far as I could tell, there was no large system moving in over the area - in
fact most of the mountains to the north of the ridge were under sunny blue
skies. But to the west, clouds had begun to blow in and started obscuring Lion
Rock and the surrounding higher terrain. As I started up the
West Ridge towards
the summit, the left side was sunny and warm while the right side of the crest
was clouded and chilly.

Still living in some sort of denial, I thought the summit was about half an hour
away from the pass, but it would take me almost three times that long and it was
nearly 1p before I reached the summit. Along the way, I found the ridge
impossible to stay on without becoming class 5. To be fair, Secor's description
mentions periodic diversions from the ridge, which is a fair description. The
left or north side is much steeper, and getting around blockages on that side
was much less fruitful than the south side of the ridge. It was a decent route,
but I think I may have been too tired by that point to enjoy it fully.

On the summit, I found myself at the edge of the cloud cover - to
the north and east
were clear skies, but immediately to the south came up the cool chill of cloud
and fog streaming over the summit and then rapidly disappating. I could see
nothing of Lion Rock, Lion Lake, and very little of the SW Face. I held out hope
that the clouds wouldn't completely cover the mountain, and hopefully wouldn't
develop into precipitation. It didn't take me long to decide not to pursue my
plan to tag Lion Rock as well. I wanted to blame it on the weather, but the
truth was that I was just too tired, and I didn't want to be returning at
midnight - I was still scheduled to take the kids to school the next morning.
In the register I found Matthew's name on the last page, he had been the last
one to visit the previous October. His entry mentioning that
he had come from Lion Rock
didn't make me feel any better. The bastard. He'd knocked off both on the same
trip, but I would have to make the haul back out here again. Though mine was
the first ascent of the year,
it wasn't unusual for the peak to be climbed in May. Most
of the previous years had ascents earlier in May, usually as a ski outing.

Rather than return via the West Ridge which had taken up much time, I figured
it would be faster to descend the class 2-3 SE Face.
Secor's description made it sound
pretty straightforward: "Climb any of several chutes and gullies to the summit
from Lion Lake." How hard could it be? Plenty, as it turned out. Had I read
Matthew's entry on Summitpost ahead
of time I might have thought twice about it. There are cliffs along much of the
face that had seemed intimidating when I viewed them during my ascent, but the
route description made me think maybe it was illusory and there would be several
chute options to choose from. My experience ended up similar to Matthew's as I
wandered back and forth along the face in the lower half looking for a way
through the cliff bands. I managed to do so, but I would have rated the crux
through the cliffs as class 3-4. And just when I thought I was home free, a
second cliff band blocked progress and I had to hunt around some more for a way
down. Even with the route-finding issues, it was still faster than the West
Ridge, taking about an hour to get through the cliffs
and onto the easier snow slopes below.
The clouds had had the added benefit of keeping the snow
from getting too soft, and I was able to boot ski down in short order.

Finding myself at the east end of mostly frozen Lion Lake, I began traversing
around the north side of the lake until I was blocked by some easy cliffs. It
would have been an minor deal to go up and around them, but I was too lazy to
climb higher if I didn't have to. The lake looked like it might still be solid
enough to walk on, so I tried that. Gingerly at first, I found the top layer
a bit spongy and worrisome. I made slow progress, stepping as lightly as I
could, wondering if this had been a dumb idea. At one point my foot
broke through to some mushy snow-ice below (soaking that boot and sock),
confirming it wasn't too bright a move. From that point I decided to get back to
shore as soon as I safely could, altogether covering about 50 yards across the
ice.

With the somewhat dangerous and somewhat dumb parts behind me, it was time to
begin the long haul out. There would be no blue sky at all for the rest of the
day as the clouds had completely socked in the valley,
leaving about 500ft
between the bottoms of the clouds and the ground below. I retraced my steps
down to Tamarack Lake
where I was happy to be able to pick up the trail again.
I still had over 15 miles to go and it would take five and a half hours
to cover the distance. My periodic pauses to photograph the emerging
wildflowers
were thinly disguised excuses to take a break, but I never lingered longer
than a minute or two. There were more uphills on the way back than I had
remembered, particularly along that part west of Buck Creek. It was a very
long grind getting back. Next time I must bring a music player to help pass the
hours.

It was 9p when I returned to the trailhead.
I had worried a bit about leaving
my car alone for so long with bears prowling about, but I found it unmolested.
A second car was in the parking lot, but no sign of occupants around the
trailhead. I decided to drive out through the south entrance thinking that way
might be faster, but it ended up taking half an hour longer and I didn't get
back to San Jose until 2a - 29 hours after leaving Sunday evening. It had
been about five hours longer than I'd hoped, but at least I'd survived. I was
very glad I didn't try to continue to Lion Rock - that could wait for another
day.